You'd think people on TV would have a better idea of how it works.
Yet clearly they don't, to judge from the insane TV parade staged by CNBC Mad Money host Jim Cramer. In his search for justice, attention or both,
Cramer inserted himself into a comedy battle between Jon Stewart and CNBC's Rick Santelli, turning what had been a one-day story into week-long,
front-page news — and diminishing his reputation and that of his network in the process. Let's just say if Cramer were a stock, the best advice
today would be "sell."

For those few who may have missed it, the feud began when Stewart's Comedy Central series, The Daily Show, answered Santelli's rant against the bad
judgment shown by homeowners with a video reel mocking CNBC's own bad judgment in covering the economic meltdown. Cramer complained that the reel
took some of his comments out of context, which led Stewart to do an even funnier, nastier clip reel aimed solely at him.

At this point, a wise media investor would have simply walked with his losses. As Stewart himself said Tuesday: "I said my piece, somehow he thought
my piece was about him, he said his piece, and so then I made it about him. And we move on."

But no. Instead Cramer went on a media tour, starting at the Today show, moving on to MSNBC's Morning Joe and then The Martha Stewart Show and
ending, in flames, on The Daily Show itself on Thursday. It's hard to say which was the worst or oddest performance: trading bluster with Joe's Joe
Scarborough, seeking comfort from Martha, or the almost embarrassingly contrite groveling he did on The Daily Show by admitting he made mistakes and
pledging to do better.

It goes on from there...

Well, despite what you may have heard from the lazily cynical, all publicity is not good publicity — particularly not when respect is your stock
in trade. No one expects Cramer to be an expert in media relations, but when you appear this publicly clueless in one area, it makes people wonder how
far that cluelessness extends.

It is a very good article..... here are a few more excerts:

When Cramer dismissed Jon Stewart as a "comedian" running "a variety show" on Today, you could practically hear the death knell ringing.
Stewart may be a comic, but he's an incredibly smart and increasingly influential one — a media darling whose comments get amplified by print, TV
and the Internet.

Yet in the end, as Cramer himself said, mistakes were made. His main line of defense was that others made mistakes as well. Though that's no doubt
true, it's hardly a line you want to fight over, particularly when, considering the different audiences the networks serve, chances are most CNBC
viewers would never have heard Stewart's devastating take-down of the network had Cramer not kept the story growing and spreading.

By picking a fight he could not win, Cramer gave Stewart time and ammunition to launch a broader, more damaging attack on CNBC itself. The thrust,
as he laid it out Thursday, is that the network gave up its role as watchdog and began to treat the market as a game and CEOs as star
quarterbacks, forgetting what was at stake should the market fail. At a time when the market and the media are held in equally low regard, that's
an argument that can easily take hold.

And yet that could also be the one upside. If this affair makes the media reconsider their coverage and the rest of us consider how easily distracted
we are by, say, stories about feuds between TV personalities, Cramer may have unintentionally done us all a service.

Jon Stewarts show, I bet will increase even more now, with all the publicity the show has gotten with Cramer.

I don't see how Cramer will survive this.

I will make a bet.............. by Mid April, Cramer will no longer be on CNBC!

It was a comically absurd drumroll for what, on the surface, was merely a squabble between TV presenters. In one corner, Jim Cramer, the closest
thing to a celebrity in American financial journalism. In the opposite corner, Jon Stewart, the satirist and host of the fake news programme The Daily
Show on Comedy Central. But unlike many a big fight, this one more than surpassed the hype. Nothing less than financial reporting itself was put on
trial – and found severely wanting.

Cramer, who dispenses raucous advice to investors on the Mad Money show on the business channel CNBC, was eviscerated by a serious and genuinely angry
Stewart. Meek and contrite, Cramer was pummelled like a rope-a-dope over his profession's failure to be an effective watchdog of Wall Street. There
was no cornerman to throw in the towel.

Yeah, I stand by my bet.......... Cramer will be GONE by Mid April.........

more

It caught the attention of the White House, prompted a frenzy among bloggers and soul-searching in the media, which failed to spot the biggest
story of a lifetime or warn the public until it was too late. Indeed, CNBC and other supposedly objective journalists stood accused of complicity with
big business, belonging to a cosy coterie that egged on company chief executives and fanned the flames of excess.

The interview has also burnished Stewart's reputation as the last best hope in the media when it comes to, in the earnest phrase of news network CNN,
"keeping them honest". It was this comedian who, like a court jester, told uncomfortable truths about the Iraq war when the mainstream media was
playing cheerleader. Now, as the financial apocalypse unfolds, it is Stewart again who is scything through the herd mentality and culture of
deference.

Jon Stewart has set new standards for both comedy and journalism on television

The interview became an online sensation that reached the White House. Press secretary Robert Gibbs said he has spoken to President Obama about
watching the Stewart-Cramer showdown. "Despite, even as Mr Stewart said, that it may have been uncomfortable to conduct and uncomfortable to
watch - I thought somebody asked a lot of tough questions," the spokesman said.

Insiders at CNBC have acknowledged the episode was a public relations disaster. A day after his public thrashing, Cramer declared that, "although
I was clearly outside of my safety zone, I have the utmost respect for this
person and the work that they do, no matter how uncomfortable it was".

Great article....... lots more to it tooo........ at the link provided

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart earned its second highest total viewer count of the year on Thursday with 2.3 million viewers (the largest viewer
audience was on Inauguration Day with 2.6 million). Why the big audience? Stewart's guest was CNBC host Jim Cramer. The interview is also
available on TheDailyshow.com site, which is reporting its highest traffic numbers in 2009.

"Liberals" live on the coast. Humm... Another vacuous statement from the bankrupt "conservative right". Hasn't your vision of reality been
re-skewed by recent events? If not, why? What will it take before rigid adherence to dogma gets questioned objectively?

Some critics are seizing on comedian Jon Stewart's attacks of CNBC to launch an online petition drive urging the network to be tougher on Wall
Street leaders.
The liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America and some economists are behind the effort, launched Monday. They're asking CNBC to hire economic
voices with a track record of being right about the current crisis and do more to hold business leaders accountable.

CNBC has been in the firing line since Stewart pointed out network personalities who, in retrospect, offered bad financial advice.

CNBC had no immediate comment. CNBC spokesman Brian Steel said last week that the network was proud of its record of offering diverse opinions on the
economy.

A group of leading progressives and economists have penned an open letter to CNBC demanding that the network publicly change its mission to focus
more on Wall Street accountability.

Building off of the momentum from last week, in which CNBC personality Jim Cramer was subjected to an embarrassing lecture by the Daily Show's Jon
Stewart, the group is launching, alongside its letter, a website:

"Americans need CNBC to do strong, watchdog journalism -- asking tough questions to Wall Street, debunking lies, and reporting the truth," the
letter reads. "Instead, CNBC has done PR for Wall Street. You've been so obsessed with getting 'access' to failed CEOs that you willfully passed
on misinformation to the public for years, helping to get us into the economic crisis we face today. You screwed up badly. Don't apologize -- fix
it!"

The letter is signed by, among others, Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy Research; Doug Henwood, author of Wall Street and After the New
Economy; Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute; Linda Jue director of the G.W. Williams Center for Independent Journalism; Robert Borosage
of Campaign for America's Future, Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism at Columbia University; Adam Green, Co-founder of Progressive Change
Campaign Committee; Rick Perlstein, author of NixonLand; and Chris Hayes of the Nation.

"[CNBC is] bringing on people who are cheerleaders for Wall Street," said Baker. "It wasn't good economic reporting, it was trying to get people
to buy stock... [host] Larry Kudlow says we are for free enterprise and free markets, and it is fine that there are shows like that. But there is very
little effort to give the other side. And obviously it was a big deal. We had a disaster that should have been foreseeable and for some of us it was
foreseeable."

The goal of the www.FixCNBC.com effort -- officials say the group will follow up the letter with phone calls and a delivery event at the network
headquarters -- is to persuade the CNBC brass to prioritize investigative financial journalism over Wall Street "access." The network, in interviews
defending its coverage, has noted that they were not alone in missing or underestimating the current economic troubles, that they have aired
comprehensive segments on the housing bubble and subprime mortgage crisis, and that they were, essentially, lied to by business leaders who were
touting the market's solvency.

I enjoyed seeing a member of the financial community get grilled. I wish it had been Madoff or some other person who actually did shenanigans,
though.

Cramer was trying to be a scapegoat, and I hope he doesn't succeed in focusing all the negativity on himself alone. This needs to be expanded to
those it was really aimed at in order from most targetted to least.

1) The Press for their weak coverage. Always trying to distract with soap-operas. Never asking tough questions unless it's someone who has no
clout.

2) The Banks for their corrupt practices, and legal(or illegal) theft.

3) The Government for it's collosal screw up in not catching anyone, except a few scape goats.

The press was the last place where the people were truly represented, and it seems even there it is severly lacking.

All three see Stewart and all who watch him as 'children' and treat the matter as such. It is getting a lot of press at least, but the segment I
saw on CNN used Steward saying, "This is not a ****ing game" as their main point. The problem is that the stock market IS a game, so it makes it
sound childish, even though the interview in it's entirety.. especially the clips of Cramer are very incriminating of what goes on in the game of
stocks..... lots and lots of cheating.

Originally posted by siryancelot
God are you all silly. Hooting and hollering about what a great job Jon Stewart did. Lets look at this a little deeper and ask ourselve some ?s.

Why do we need to look much deeper than the criminal insider trading , and fraud perpetrated by ratings agencies, is so easily exposed by Stewart? Why
do partisan folk such as yourself so often insist on increasing the scope of the 'conspiracy' until you have managed to blame it entirely on a
rival faction?

Why did he get into this spat with Cramer in the first place?
- simple: because Cramer is hammering Obama for how he is "fixing"
the economy.

Obama is not fixing the economy AT ALL and this is pretty clear when one notices how he is basically giving the banks what they asked for. The fact
that he is being attacked as incompetant and worse is mainly because he is actually trying to convince Wall street to behave less overtly criminally
insane by paying themselves huge bonusus out of bail out funds. The fact that you have managed to turn these reactionary right wing attacks on Obama
into the root cause of Stewarts expose of one of Wall streets Cheerleaders is as sad as it is ironic.

Soooo, you get Frank Rich and Stewart, people so
obviously beholden to the Democratic Party(and more specifically
their liberal base), attacking Cramer's past misdeeds to MARGINALIZE
him.

Beholden to the democractic party? They proved this by exposing the fact the Financial news media lies to cover the crimes of wall which the Obama
government is bailing out a bit slower than Wall street wanted? Hilarious...

It doesn't matter that what Cramer is saying about Obama's
plan to "save" the economy is an outright joke, because Stewart has
exposed Cramer(detect the sarcasm?)

That is not what Cramer said, is saying, or could ever suggest and stay in his industry. The wall street right wingers are most happy with the money
they are getting and the claims that Obama is 'destroying' the economy were made in reference to how 'slowly' the bail out money was in coming;
not the fact that they were getting bailed out. Off course bailing out the banks wont save the American economy but who seriously believes that when
the banks who are supposed to start lending again are merely pocketing the funds?

Stewart is as much a partisan hack as Hannity.

Hack presumes no merit to a cause; that can certainly be said of Hannity but i don't know how Stewart isn't helping expose the irony the mesh of
irony that is commonly called the United States of America.

They all play to their constituents and attack people to marginalize them.

Who are Stewarts 'constituents'? Do we know who watches his show and who they vote for? What?

Sure Cramer's a snake oil salesman, but now that Stewart finally did some tough journalism, you all will be too busy whoopin' it up to see
how he shills for Obama and co.

Finally did some Journalism? Stewart is as smart a journalist as they come to understand that you can not get much truth out trough normal American
media channels. If your going to be doing serious journalism your better off in the satire industry where those who wish can just call what you do
'comedy'; the intelligent people who want to figure out the truth will get the message loud and clear.

Silly stupid partisan hacks.

Stupid he isn't but admittedly there has been a lot of rather uninformed support for Jon Stewart who has after all had nearly a decade to figure out
how to make a impact. That it takes a financial collapse of this epic scale for him to take a more mainstream stab at the financial markets does not
say too much about how willing he is to truly risk his neck. That he still seems to be doing more than most other journalist is a sad commentary on
the state of journalism in the western world in general.

"Liberals" live on the coast. Humm... Another vacuous statement from the bankrupt "conservative right". Hasn't your vision of reality been
re-skewed by recent events? If not, why? What will it take before rigid adherence to dogma gets questioned objectively?

Sounds like he's inviting you to attend all the sweet KKK rallies the fly-over states are so famous for. You might need to get some teeth pulled
first to fit in.

"Liberals" live on the coast. Humm... Another vacuous statement from the bankrupt "conservative right". Hasn't your vision of reality been
re-skewed by recent events? If not, why? What will it take before rigid adherence to dogma gets questioned objectively?

Sounds like he's inviting you to attend all the sweet KKK rallies the fly-over states are so famous for. You might need to get some teeth pulled
first to fit in.

It must feel tragic that your only allies are in positions of little importance, but this era is truly unprecedented. There may well be an iron wall,
every turret manned, a great menace rising high above all of you. Scattered, people are nothing but bricks in the wall, but united and consciously
aware of their situation, those in positions of apparent power will find themselves both unsupported and faced with a sight more terrifying than any
shadows they ever cast on you. They will be faced with a wave of unstoppable light rising higher than the Moon and Sun, a power fully present in
everyone and a hope that will never hide. It will be the turning of the tide.

You cannot be enslaved without your permission. Otherwise, if the war were already so hopelessly lost, why do your true "masters" still hide their
faces? They are more afraid of you than you are of them. Need you more proof? Take a look around. The knowledge is everywhere, the people of the world
are present as well. All that remains is to combine the two.

So what's different about someone doing the reverse here? Jon Stewart is on Comedy Central - the same network that brings you Larry the Cable
Guy (incidentally Larry is on the front page of the website) and SouthPark, the show that made "anal probes" famous. Yeah, that's pretty
serious.

Oh, i see. So we're going to play the "which network is more serious" card?

Okay.

Fox news spreads lies and propagates racist ideology under the guise of "no-spin zones" and "fair and balanced coverage" (never has been, never
will be)

oh it also belongs to the same network as

The Simpson

Family Guy

American Dad

The Critic

All one really has to do to see the validity (or extreme lack there-of) of Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, etc.. is visit
mediamatters.com

So the over-all point here is

Just because you CALL yourself a credible and newsworthy source doesnt make it true. Only people like yourself that believe it will find places
like Fox News a worthwhile gatherer of non-propaganda.

Most people in this country look to Jon Stewart and his show as a filter of the all the BS.

they call it like they see it, and they throw in some dirty fart jokes along the way to keep people interested.

If calling it how it is makes you a less credible person, then, yes, SoS37, you and people like you have a point.

Unfortunately for you -t he only people you're going to find to agree with you are the same types of folks you're going to find at Fox
News.

Sean Hannity - Ties to white supremacy that he won't condemn and tries to hide?

So what's different about someone doing the reverse here? Jon Stewart is on Comedy Central - the same network that brings you Larry the Cable
Guy (incidentally Larry is on the front page of the website) and SouthPark, the show that made "anal probes" famous. Yeah, that's pretty
serious.

Oh, i see. So we're going to play the "which network is more serious" card?

Okay.

Fox news spreads lies and propagates racist ideology under the guise of "no-spin zones" and "fair and balanced coverage" (never has been, never
will be)

oh it also belongs to the same network as

The Simpson

Family Guy

American Dad

The Critic

All one really has to do to see the validity (or extreme lack there-of) of Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, etc.. is visit
mediamatters.com

So the over-all point here is

Just because you CALL yourself a credible and newsworthy source doesnt make it true. Only people like yourself that believe it will find places
like Fox News a worthwhile gatherer of non-propaganda.

Most people in this country look to Jon Stewart and his show as a filter of the all the BS.

they call it like they see it, and they throw in some dirty fart jokes along the way to keep people interested.

If calling it how it is makes you a less credible person, then, yes, SoS37, you and people like you have a point.

Unfortunately for you -t he only people you're going to find to agree with you are the same types of folks you're going to find at Fox
News.

Sean Hannity - Ties to white supremacy that he won't condemn and tries to hide?

jon stewart is a die hard liberal and has even said it. the only thing he is filtering out of the news is the correct story and inserts his liberal BS
into it.

jon stewart is a die hard liberal and has even said it. the only thing he is filtering out of the news is the correct story and inserts his
liberal BS into it.

Wow. Use the reply button

(that quote is huge!)

and, yes, he is a die hard liberal, and he does admit it, but since when is being a "liberal" something to be ashamed of?

You call him a liberal because you think being a liberal is a bad thing.
Personally, i prefer the term "progressive" over liberal, simply because it has a more direct implication on the directive of those involved.

But one thing i learned (starting in grade school i think) was that people always call you "dirty little names" to make themselves feel better about
the situation.

Jon Stewart drove a steak in the heart of Mr. Cramer, while simultaneously exposing the larger network of corrupt thinkers who live under the guise of
what we call the main stream media.

Those "corrupt thinkers" are nothing more than corporate yes-men who are out to make a buck, no matter the cost.

Some of these folks are invovled in politics, and stand to loose major credibility in the media, therefore are lashing back at Stewart for his status
as a "comedian" ... he can't be taken serious! HE'S NOT A POLITICIAN

As if that were hypocritical enough.

The "messiah" of the conservative party - Ronald Regan - was a stinkin Actor.

Ahhh.

Politics.
It takes a comedian to truly expose the gross underbelly of them.

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